BUKE AND GASE are Brooklyn-based two-piece Arone Dyer on the “buke” (a self-modified sixstring baritone ukulele) and Aron Sanchez on the “gas” (a guitar-bass hybrid of his own creation). Both of them play double duty mobilizing a small army of foot percussion. These instruments are then filtered through various pedals, amplifiers and other homemade inventions to create a surprisingly complex sound. Arone’s supermelodic vocal lines weave through the beautiful yet sometimes unwieldy musical matter, balancing light and dark, calamity and control.

Their musical multi-tasking makes for live performances that are both visually unexpected and sonically explosive. They self-released an EP titled +/- and in 2010 Brassland released their debut album Riposte. Stereogum's Brandon Stosuy says of the band, "You hear Beth Ditto for a second (one who races/fixes bikes and builds her own instruments, doesn't hang out at fashion shows), Kathleen Hannah in those Bikini Kill days, Throwing Muses, something else, etc., an overall joy."

Sacramento producer Raleigh Moncrief grew up south of San Francisco, climbing trees, damming gutters, drawing things and starting fires. He wasn’t allowed to watch MTV, but he found Nirvana on the radio dial one blessed day and spent the next several months begging his father for a guitar. It was a cream-colored Squier Strat — like the one he thought Kurt played — and it sealed his fate at the tender age of 13.

Raleigh (then, and sometimes still “Robby”) cut his teeth in several rock bands on his way to community college. There he heard Philip Glass’ “Rubric” in a music appreciation class and soon dropped out; he had things to do that had nothing to do with a marine biology degree. He moved north of San Francisco.

Though Moncrief’s march through music has been tireless, it’s happened largely behind the scenes. A longtime collaborator to prolific Hella drummer Zach Hill, the two have made beautiful noise together both on the road and on record (see Hill’s 2008 Anticon/Ipecac solo LP Astrological Straits, and their joint album Who Do You Think You Aren’t?). He’s been Marnie Stern’s go-to touring guitarist, the master of a freewheeling post-rock trio called What’s Up?, and producer/engineer to Dirty Projectors, with whom he spent three months in a Portland warehouse tirelessly tracking the band’s contemporary classic Bitte Orca. (More recently, he produced the similarly ambitious new Ganglians album, Still Living.)